Let me explain myself a little here. I’ve just watched a video by It’s Okay To Be Smart about visitors coming to Earth in 100,000,000 years and finding evidence of us and the Anthropocene. It is a very cool video to watch actually. If you’ve not already seen it you can see it here:

It is an awesome video. I am absolutely in love with the idea of another space faring species one day in the distant future stumbling across this strange planet, after we’re long gone. Whether we’ve died out or moved onto a new home planet.

Now, the reason for the title is because the video got me thinking… What if we’re never found? Say we do die out before being able to make an impact on our Solar System off of Planet Earth, and before we can make any kind of impact on any other star systems. That just leaves this planet, the tomb of the human race. Think about it, this small rocky planet in a small part of the Orion Arm in the Milky Way galaxy could easily go undetected until the Sun enter its red giant phase and either melts the earth surface and therefore everything on it/in it, or swallows up the Earth entirely. That would leave just our space probes in the Universe for other space faring species to find. Those probes have such a slim chance of being discovered, an entire planet was not discovered, so how could we expect these other species to find such a small object in the vast expanse of space? Sure they may be discovered, but they may also have fallen victim to a star it’ll eventually comes across, or a black hole. Those are just as a for instance. The Universe could destroy all evidence of our existence before it’s ever found!

I don’t know about you, but…

Never being found is a horrifying thought for me. The human race is by no means perfect, but we are here. And we’ve been here for a while (Okay, a relatively short amount of time in the great scheme of things), whilst we’ve been here we’ve been doing really well. As Joe Hanson said in the video our population reached 1 billion with the Industrial Revolution and by the 1950s our population just… People were popping out children like that was the new hip thing. And now in 2016 our population is something crazy like 7.4 billion people. 7.4 billion people are now living on this Earth, and it’s a very real possibility that they’ll never be known. Never.

I don’t know why this bothers me. I think maybe it’s because the human race tries so hard to learn of its place in the Universe. To understand the Universe around us. We’ve done pretty good on that front too, I don’t see many people throwing themselves off of buildings in the hopes they’ll float, as like ‘Two fingers to you, Sir Isaac Newton’. You know, we’ve got this understanding of how gravity works down remarkably well. I’m not saying we’re experts in any study of gravity, not at all, but we understand it well enough to use planets as slingshots. Based on that, and my studies at Uni that we’ve got a reasonably good understanding of gravity. Gravity is a fundamental force that surrounds us all the time (Which I’m rather thankful for, I must say) and we’ve learnt about it. Earth is planet sized lab diary, in my view. We have learned so much, and continue to do so. We write it down, test it, and test it again. I think it would be so incredibly sad if that becomes lost to the Universe forever.

I don’t know, man. It’s 03:53 right now and I just…

I just… I hate this idea. I watched another video recently, done by Test Tube Plus or DNews, I forget which, but I believe it was one of those. Anyway, they were discussing where ‘everyone else’ was. They mentioned Fermi’s paradox. For those that don’t know Fermi’s paradox is essentially the lack of evidence of alien civilisations despite the high probability of their existence, and why this is. As it stands with current technology the human race could potentially colonise a portion of the galaxy in a few tens of millions of years (Which on an astronomical time scale is the blink of an eye). As a potential solution to this paradox they suggested that the human race is simply one of the very first civilisations with space capabilities, and for that matter radio communications abilities too. So we could be the Universe’s trial run of life, kind of like “Let’s see how this turns out…”. Which I guess is cool, we’re like the oldest child in that respect, however my issue is that the younger siblings know of the elders ones. Even if they are not around any more and they learn from the things that the elder siblings did. Now newer civilisations cannot do that if we disappear without trace (or very little trace). All the acquired knowledge, all the experiences, all the trial and error, all the bad, all the good, just gone, and nobody ever even knew it was there.

I’m an aspiring Astrophysicist man, this is my worst nightmare!

Once I’ve finished getting my necessary degrees to go into research, I’d like to go into research and learn so much more about the universe I, we, live in. You know, have findings published, have them read by others, sharing the knowledge. I think I’m not liking as well that all that could be for nothing, that someday all the sharing of knowledge will just stop. And stop for good with the dying breath of the last human. I’ve said it before, I’m not humanity’s biggest fan at all, and the loss of the human civilisation, doesn’t phase me. It’s the loss of all that we’ve learned that bothers me I think the most. I believe it was Nelson Mandela that said this:

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

I think that can be extended to the life in the Universe as a whole. Education is a powerful thing and I think everyone can benefit from it. Human or otherwise. Knowledge and understanding is so precious, and all efforts should be made to preserve it.

Some people might argue that we can preserve all that the human race has learned as much as we want but it’s useless to other species as they may not communicate the same way we do, or they won’t understand our language. Well we didn’t understand the language of many ancient human civilisations, we still learnt a thing or two from them when we finally worked up what they were saying. Not only that, we don’t just have to write down what we find out. We can create diagrams, audio files. Anyone to find it might not be able to decipher what they’re looking at, at first. Or maybe never, but maybe another species might be able too, and we might teach them something that’ll help them advance as a civilisation.

The above is obviously a bit of wishful thinking, but it’s not totally out of the realms of possibility.

I say preserve the knowledge we acquire. Protect it. Treasure it. We’ve worked hard for it, and education is important. Regardless of who or what the student is that is learning.

You can find Joe Hanson (Writer and host of “It’s Okay To Be Smart”) here:

Well… Where should I start? I know, I’ll start with last night. I went out in Town with my friends and we got a lot drunk. Not only a few drunk, a lot drunk. One of my friends was kicked out of Pier (A nightclub) and I quizzed him this morning as to why…

I don’t even remember pier lol

– Cam (03-02-16)

That answers my question then really.

Anyway…

Anyway, onto what we all should really be talking about more. I got on the bus about a week ago and man it started filling up fast (Driver skipped stops as a result, kind of full). A girl got on and she was using crutches and had some sort of cast around her leg and she then proceeded to stand… stand… on the opposite side of the gangway to me and I thought the one of the three people sat by her would offer up their seats so she could sit down (As my seat would be a bit awkward to get to for her) and not one of them offered their seats up for this girl. Not one. Scrubs. So I offered up my seat and helped her to it so she could sit down and not risk further injury by attempting to stand.

I ran this incident past my father, Father Beep, and he thinks it’s all to do with the state of public transport, or more that public transport in many places is insufficient and so people have got an attitude sort of like “I paid for this, I’m going to keep it”, rather than actually doing a decent thing and letting someone who, for the time being, is not as mobile or steady on their feet as they were and will be. It’s madness, I had no issue getting up and offering the girl my seat, and I, myself, am not as steady on my feet as I’d like to be due to a leg injury of my own. Which further proves my point, I would give up a seat, despite my own instabilities so that someone who is clearly more in need of the seat could sit down. Now, I’m not saying that those three people near her weren’t in need of those seats themselves for some unseen disability, but I struggle to believe all three who were, to an onlooker, young healthy students have an unseen disability. Although not out of the realms of possibility I guess.

Another thing I’d like to mention

I think people shout loudly when things don’t go the way they want it but shy away from any opportunity to change it. I don’t think people realise how big of an impact they could and can have if they just stood up and said “Hey man, that’s not cool, pack that in”. There’s a lot people should be standing up against. A lot.

I feel like people should be getting behind some seriously important issues. Issues which in some cases effect everyone, and I mean everyone. All, what is it now? 7.4 billion people? All of us. Things like getting a hold on Global Warming, Nuclear disarmament. We have no need for nuclear weapons, like who thought they would be a good idea to keep around. Keeping operational warheads is a joke! “Oh here’s an idea, let’s keep this warhead that can literally kill 70000 people in mere seconds” We can kill enough people with the regular rockets and guns we have at the moment. There’s no need to start just mass killings. It makes no sense to keep them too, I’m fairly sure there’s conventions (Ratified by many world powers) that state that while you may go to war you cannot cause unnecessary suffering to civilians caught up in the war, or for that matter the combatants. A nuclear warhead is non-discriminatory, it’ll blow up, burn, irradiate whatever the hell is in its way. No questions asked. To me that’s the very definition of unnecessary suffering.

Scientific exploits need more attention and support also. This stuff literally saves your life. Literally. Scientific fields, certainly exploratory ones, are grossly underfunded. If people were to get up from in front of their TV (which they’re only doing to find something to complain about it seems now) and started getting behind the notion for more funding for the exploratory sciences, imagine… Just imagine what we could uncover. What we could solve. Who we could help as a result.

Hell, it might even benefit the whole of humanity rather than a select few! Who wouldn’t want that? I’m not humanity’s greatest advocate however, I’ve said it before, we’ve got to live together for roughly 70-80 years, so why not make it the best experience we can?

Even if you can’t directly help, start spreading the word of whatever notion takes you fancy. It could be the link that gets it seen by those who can truly give it some momentum.

Stand up and be counted.

On another note

My brother turns 18 in little over a week, which should be cool. We’re going quadbiking. It does mean I’m going to be at home for that weekend though, so I’ll miss seeing the new Deadpool movie with my friends here at University. Also my friend Cams girlfriend is going to be down (Or up I suppose) that weekend and everyone’s met her but me, and they speak so highly of her and I’m a little annoyed I won’t get to meet her. Hey-ho, another time. I just have to listen to another few days of my friends praising Cam and his girlfriend, and how cute they are together.

In about a week both my parents children (Of which I make up 50%, in case you hadn’t realised) will be adults and as Father Beep would say “You’re an adult now, so if you die it’s your fault and not mine now”. He’s not wrong.

Let me elaborate, at university you will meet some amazing people and get up to some incredible antics, and they’ll kick ass!

You will also however, find that your lectures, to begin with, will also kick ass. Your ass. Now this isn’t as bad as it sounds though. If you just get your act together and power through the studying and the lecturers, making sure you’re all up-to-date, all the time, you’ll be O.K. The ass kicking will still continue, but it won’t hurt as much.

But also with those friends, that kick ass, you’ll have a blast, making every penny worth it. I think… Anyway, with those friends you’ll get up to all kinds of stuff. It’s great. For me one of these great instances was handcuffing a friend to a chair, and then lifting him into a trolley and then chaining him in the bathroom. All that was before anyone had had anything to drink.

They may also assign you a new name. A nickname. Some people are rather unfortunate and get horrible nicknames that people call them and sadly they just grow to ignore it’s connotations and answer to it anyway. This seemingly only happens to those who do something remarkably stupid however, so as long as you don’t do anything remarkably stupid during Freshers, I reckon you’ll be alright! I got the name “Beep” and to be fair, I love it. I think it’s brilliant. All because my new found friends didn’t believe me when I said the scan in reader things beeped. By the time they realised I was right the name stuck, and like I said I love it. In fact it occasionally takes me a little while to answer to my actual name.

After those realisations Uni is more or less studying during the day and then killing off all those brains cells by night. As you’re learning so much and using so many brain cells for that activity and then killing loads at night, it balances out? I don’t know. I do Astrophysics not brain biology. Although a girl I know, Chloe, might be able to answer that for me. I’ll ask her next week.

She baked cupcakes for my birthday. They were brilliant, she is the most excellent baker.

Kick Ass Opportunities:

You’ll also get some awesome opportunities at Uni too. Such as studying abroad, learning new languages (I’ve recently signed up to learn Russian! They offer free spaces to learn a language here, so I’ve yet to see if I got one of the spaces, but I did sign up!) and to try out new things. There’s a kayaking society here that I may join yet. So if I do that, that’ll be a new experience. Also playing Mario Kart Double Dash for like 48 hours was a new experience for me too. Amazing fun though, can’t knock it!

Also random feelings of “I should be naked right now”, although not a new experience but the fact that it’s so accepted at Uni is new to me. It’s great.

Now for the Maths you can’t argue with:

I also think to “sum up” University, I think every penny you will have to pay back afterwards? I think it’s worth it. For me, that is. There’s been a few people that have dropped out and disappeared over night, so I guess they didn’t feel like it was worth it. Check out the maths, it checks out:

Tutition Fee + Maintenance Loan + 3 Years = Worth it.

Trust me. I do Physics. I can maths. This equation does make one assumption though, that as a Physics person I must point out; it assumes that you have researched your course and are O.K with every aspect of each year of it. But if you’ve done that, it should work every time.

Last bit…

University is something I think everyone should consider. It’s not for everyone obviously and nobody can make you go, but do consider it!

Let me tell you something about that film, that is incredibly uncomfortable to watch, and I’ll tell you why. The reason I find it so uncomfortable to watch is because of the one question that goes around my head throughout the entire film. Now, I knew what happened to Sophie Lancaster before I watched the film, so this particular question was there for the entirety of the film. I would imagine it would come about for those of you who are unfamiliar with Sophie’s story, once you’d heard a little about Sophie.

This question is simply; “Why?”. Why was she killed? Why did they do the things they did to her? Why?

Okay, the answers to that question is “Because she was a goth” or “Because she is different”. But they are NOT answers! They are NOT excuses! They are pathetic!

Sophie and her boyfriend, Rob, were attacked because they were “different”. WHY? WHAT DOES THAT ACHIEVE? We live in the 21st Century! Not the Dark Ages where you can take someone’s life just because you feel like it! NO!

Sophie Lancaster, was by all accounts a strong independent 20 year old woman, who could’ve been so much, she could’ve done so much! She was very much against how farm animals are treated when they’re taken from the farm to be put in front of us at meal times. She was a vegetarian! A pacifist.

While I realise I get this information from interviews with people that knew her… Can they all be wrong? Yes, everyone that knew her is going to be somewhat bias when describing her, but they are all the same!

I am so angry that this happened, even now. Eight years after the event. It should never have happened!

Just because they were different. Please, your head might be a different shape to mine, doesn’t mean I’m going to kick it in. Your favourite food is pizza? Well mine isn’t, guess that means I should kick you to death. NO! Everyone has different likes and dislikes and EVERYONE should respect that. They should encourage that, and they should help to protect peoples right to express their own individual likes and dislikes.

I cannot, just cannot, believe something like this has even happened.

I watched that film, and it made me squirm, which is a feat in itself. I am not easily phased. But that question, going around and around in my head; “Why?”. There is no reason for that to have happened!

Why can’t people accept others for who they are, and what they are?

I am not humanity’s greatest advocate, not at all, and no, I don’t like many people, and maybe I don’t give some people the chances they deserve. But I will never kick the living daylights out of another individual because of how he/she has chosen to dress. That is disgusting. We are all here for 75/80s on average, why can’t we just look out for each other while we here? How hard is that of a concept to grasp? HOW HARD?

You don’t even have to look at anyone that dresses in such a way that it may offend you. If that’s how you are, well then I’m sorry but you’re an asshat. You really need to re-evaluate your life because nothing how somebody dresses should be so offensive to you that you feel the need to beat them to such an extent that they lose their life.

You do not have the right, you do not have the right to decide whether or not their choice of attire is worthy of a death sentence. I’ll say it again for the people at the back YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO MAKE THAT DECISION.

This kind of thing makes me so angry, it is a hate crime after all, and yet they are not treated as severely as they should be! However Sylvia Lancaster has been working tirelessly with her charity “The Sophie Lancaster Foundation” to change this. Maybe one day all of Sylvia Lancaster’s efforts will pay off to such an extent that all assaults, thefts, etc, etc that are the result of somebody simply not liking the way someone is, or how they dress, will be treated as harshly as the victim was during the crime.

I wear my S.O.P.H.I.E wristband all day, everyday in support of the Foundation. In the hopes that the money I paid for it will go towards helping putting an end to such awful crimes against those of an alternative lifestyle.

My wristband, that I never take off.

It’s an awful, awful thing to do to someone, just because of what they like, or how they are. It’s an awful, awful things to do to their families, who are PROUD of who, and what they are.

I hope Sophie’s legacy is one that’ll last for generation and generations to come. It’s something can all learn from.

We all need to accept people for who they are, what they are, and how they choose to be.

People and all different, but they are are still people regardless of their interests, background, sexual orientation or whatever else you can think.

Rest in peace Sophie, and keep up the good work Sylvia Lancaster.

To everyone else? Take it from someone who’s not great with people, so it must mean something for me to say… Look after the people that are here on Earth. We’ve all got a limited time here, and it’s not always as enjoyable as it could be, so just look after each other.

If you take the usual time you wake up, say, I don’t know, like 6 or 7am, for a weekday? Well you can pretty much just stick a “pm” on the end of those times rather than the usual “am” because that’s waking up time for me!

Honestly it’s astonishing how quickly you can mess up your sleeping pattern, when you no longer have anything that important to do. Sure, yeah, I have to go to work, but I’m a bartender, that’s evening work anyway! Well, 9 times out of ten it is. Sometimes I start earlier in the day.

I’ve always preferred to work in the evening and through to the middle of the night, because well… That’s just what I do, I like doing that! ASAPScience did a video on this!

It’s an interesting watch!

BUT!

A congratulations is in order as America’s Supreme Court has ruled that homosexual couples can marry NATIONWIDE and not just in individual states! WOO! They can be just as miserable as the rest of us!

I joke, of course. This is a huge step in the right direction, and the many, many countries that are still denying homosexual couples this right to marry, need to follow suit. Sooner rather than later. This is the kind of world people need to be living in! One that is accepting of new concepts, and new ideas. The world needs to be far more open minded than it is today. The reason I think it should be more open minded is because people are happier when people can accept them for who they are, and what they choose to do. You’re a girl that like dressing up as an alien from Planet Zorp, great good for you! You carry on, don’t let anyone get you down! You’re a guy that likes watching Rom-Coms while eating ice cream while upset, hell man, you carry on, if that is making you feel better then I’m not one to stop you, you go right ahead, man I hope you feel better soon.

Of course, there are some limitation to just how quirky and unique you can be, and before some of you go off on one and start the whole “You can’t stop people being who they are” and that kind of rubbish, here’s why there are certain limitations:

Some aspects of life require a certain level of caution and this can, and usually does, include some kind of restriction on behaviour and also some form of safety clothing. Now you MUST adhere to these rules and guidelines because if you don’t… Well there’s a strong chance you’ll seriously injure yourself, or someone else, or kill yourself or someone else. Now, if you want to be stupid, and ignore these rules and guidelines, then that’s down to you, just don’t be around anyone else when you’re being moronic. It’s one thing to alter your own life, or end it, in such a stupid way, and another to include someone else. It’s not cool to include someone else.

Other instances require a level of professionalism so no, you can’t go up to a guest/customer and say “Sup mate! ‘Ow ya doin’?” because the level of respect in those sentences is so low you’ll never get a scale low enough to measure it. “Yes Sir/Ma’am” is how you address guests/customers, or “Yes Miss” instead of “Ma’am”. BECAUSE IT’S RESPECTFUL!

||Quick Note: The level of respect that people my age show to those older and/or younger, and to their peers is absolutely disgraceful. I hate meeting people around 16-21 because they’re just so disrespectful of other people, and other people’s stuff. I’m no angel, I’ll admit, but damn. My dad needs a huge pat on the back for how I’ve turned out, I am nowhere near as bad as some, they’re on a whole new level!||

As I’ve stated above there are some instances where you can’t express yourself to quite the extent you’d like to, but there are good reasons for this! In a professional environment what you’re actually doing is representing someone’s source of income, or your own source of income, and by being a total ********, people will decide not to come back, and therefore that business loses those customers and hence the money they might have spent there.

However, all that being said, your sexuality and who you want to marry is one of those things that should not be controlled by someone else. If you want to marry a man, go right ahead! If you want to marry a woman, go ahead! I cannot believe Governments were ever stopping you in the first place! It’s madness. While I’m aware that’s how people thought back in the days of old, but it’s not how many, and by many I mean an awful lot of, people think today. So I ask again; why were they stopping you in the first place?

Marry who you want, and live a long and happy life. That’s how it should be.

That’s how I hope more and more countries will begin to think like. We’re all human, and we all deserve the right to marry whatever we want to.

Congratulations America! You’ve just made approximately 10.8 million people just that little bit happier.

Also, maybe now we can stop calling it gay marriage, and start calling it…Drum roll please…. Marriage! After all, that’s what it is, and the people participating in a “gay marriage” are people, and people get married. So please, “Sam and Jack had a lovely wedding”, not “a lovely gay wedding”. Also, “Louise and Charlotte had a really romantic wedding”, not “Louise and Charlotte had a romantic gay wedding”

Today was the last exam for my A-levels, and let me tell you this. The exams I’ve had to sit this year were awful, so so awful. I think somebody said something mean about OCR and they just didn’t get over it, and instead of talking it out just took it all out on us Physics and Chemistry students. Edexcel were (Insert colourful word of choice here) too! As a user of twitter wrote about how we were given the formula for the area of a cone for something that resembled a car door!

How did it go?

Well… I don’t know. I really don’t and that bothers me far more than it should. I worked so hard to get these and get the grades needed for Uni, but I don’t think it’s enough. So I could well end up resitting so I can go to my preferred Uni. Some exams went OK, for instance the resits, for AS, I did weren’t horrendous, they weren’t nice but I think I did well enough, just went A2 started, I don’t know what happened. I struggled through AS sure, but everything started going downhill from the word go for A2. It would seem that I’m just going to have to wait until August to find out whether my worries were justified or just totally weren’t worth it. But that is too far away! So so far away, like August 14th or something like that.

Well I’ll just have to wait and see won’t I!

Just have to keep telling myself, even if my grades are so bad I can’t go to Uni, that it’s not the end of the world, one more year of college and I’ll get to go, so no big deal right? If that what it takes to go then I will have to do that.

But tonight! I’m celebrating the end of the exam series, and the end of my A-levels, because hell, I’ve work hard to get here, even if I don’t think my grades are going to be as good as I know they should be, but I’m celebrating tonight! Going to go out with some friends, crawl back to my friends house, he’s letting me crash there tonight, so all is well on that front.

I believe we’re all off to the beach tomorrow as well. That’ll be fun!

Cheers! It’s been fun, now let’s see about getting into Uni…. When I get back from the beach tomorrow of course!

Everybody gets them. Whoever says they don’t is lying. Whoever says they have them all the time, every single day, is also lying. Sure you can have a long streak of bad days, but that doesn’t mean all days will be bad. There will be good days, and if by any chance some of you reading this don’t believe that, well, come back to this on on of those good days, and read this:

I told you so

.
– amillennialsmind (31/05/15)

Some days are just the worst, and the next two days might also be just the worst. But hey, just think, at the end of whatever it is getting you down you can say “I did that…I did that!” then you can go and kick more butt!

What if it’s really bleak?

Don’t want to hear it. Don’t care. Nothing is so bleak that you can’t come out of the end of it, and still carry on as you intended. Absolutely nothing. You need to set yourself a goal, and be realistic. Don’t set a goal of playing rugby on the moon with Jeff Goldblum, or something like that that’s equally as stupid. Set yourself a goal, and head for it, don’t stop. Just go for it. Before you know it, you’ll have achieved that goal, and you’ll have a positive you can attribute to yourself. No one can take that from you. That, is such a good feeling.

Just need time?

Also fine! Go and grab your significant other, your friend with benefits, a film, your teddy bear, a homeless man whatever you need, grab it/them and just chill out with them. Take as long as you need. Just so long as you get your head together, and then get straight back to it when you feel better! Don’t get into the habit of moping around and feeling sorry for yourself however!

Look after yourself!

You are singly the best and only thing to help through the bad days, look after yourself!

“I think that you cannot just talk of a defeat for Christian principles, but of a defeat for humanity”

– Cardinal Pietro Parolin

“DEFEAT FOR HUMANITY”?! Are you aware of the actual definition of “Humanity” is, Mr Parolin? Are you? Because I don’t think you are. I’ll tell you anyway, just in case you don’t know (I’m 90% sure you don’t already know). Google has the definition of ‘Humanity’ as follows:See that last one? See it? AND can you see the synonyms? One of them is “Tolerance”, in case you can’t see it.

Why is the recent vote results of Ireland’s gay marriage referendum a “Defeat for humanity”? Is it because it goes against what you believe to be the correct way to live a life? Well, let me tell you something, allowing gay marriage in Ireland was VOTED for by nearly 62% of the voters in Ireland. Nearly 62%! That’s winning by a margin of nearly 11%! That’s not a small margin, a lot of people voted in favour of this new legislation to legalise gay marriage. Dude this is huge step forward in getting people all of the rights that they deserve. Everybody should welcome and celebrate this fact. Everyone.

Gays are contributing members of society, so they deserve this right!

While yes, I agree, there are some homosexuals that are horrible people, absolutely horrible people. Some serial killers have been known to kill to fulfil their disturbing homosexual desires. Yes, these homosexuals, not really the people we want in society. But let me tell you something else! THERE ARE MORE HETEROSEXUAL SERIAL KILLERS THAN HOMOSEXUAL SERIAL KILLERS. There are a lot of homosexuals that do a lot of good in society, and society would be missing something without them. I can give you a list of homosexual people who actively,and/or positively contributed to society. Here goes…

Alan Carr
While I’m not a fan of him myself, he does bring laughter to thousands, if not millions of people. He is an entertainer, and for those who are fans of him, he is priceless. They’ll never again find another Alan Carr if he was to disappear.

Tim CookHe is currently the CEO of Apple Inc. Whether you are a fan of Apple products or not, you cannot deny that they help expand and improve the technologies that we have today, making everyone’s lives just that little bit simpler by having all their devices connected. Taken a picture? Save it to both your phone and your laptop.

Freddie MercuryBefore you say it, yes I know. Freddie Mercury is no longer with us. But how does that take away from the fact that he is the reason some people have some unforgettable memories? Or that he and his band Queen created some of the best timeless rock tracks? Tracks still enjoyed by heterosexuals and homosexuals alike, all over the world. Queen is one of the best-selling bands of all time, a lot of their best tracks feature Freddie Mercury’s vocals.

Sir Ian McKellenFantastic actor. Gandalf and/or Magneto couldn’t be played by anyone else. It just wouldn’t be the same, and no one will be able to replace him!

Do I need to continue?

The point I’m trying to make is that not all homosexual people are evil, and need to be shoved out of mind. Most (By that I mean, nearly all of them) are just people like me, like my neighbours, like the girl who sits next to me in Chemistry and like the guy in the Co-op that gave me that chocolate bar, free, because he couldn’t be bothered to scan it through to the till.

Even those in your religion are realising that you can’t keep denying people rights, because they’re different.

The Archbishop of Dublin, who is, incidentally, one of Ireland most senior Catholic officials, has stated that the church needs a “Reality check”. Times are changing, people are changing, opinions are changing. Mr Parolin, you are living in an outdated world, and you need to leave it and join an increasing number of people, religious and otherwise, in this new and more tolerant world. It’ll do you good to stop hating on specific groups of people. It really will.

“If someone is gay and seeks the Lord with good will, who am I to judge?”

If you Religious leader is for accepting the homosexual community into the Church, then why can’t you do the same? It won’t harm anyone.

I’ll tell you what will harm people…

You, spreading such hate about the gay community! Teens that haven’t yet come out, are terrified a lot of the time to do so! Because people like you, who are unfortunately very influential, are spreading such disgusting things about them. There’s nothing wrong with them! It’s not a choice, before you, or anyone else for that matter comes out with that old excuse. Do you think they’d choose to enter into a life of bullying and torment? No, they wouldn’t. I certainly wouldn’t want to do that.

Did you know that 30% of completed teenage suicides are because the victim is unsure of his/her sexual orientation or because they were bullied because they’re young men who find men attractive, or because they are young women who find other women attractive?

No. I don’t think you did. You just spread this hate without first thinking of the consequences. That, that is disgusting.

I just… Ugh, why is it so difficult to accept the LGBT community?

There’s nothing wrong with them. Nothing at all. They are people too, and you should start seeing them as such. They deserve the right to marry as much as heterosexual couples. You’re worried about it ruining the whole family unit ideology, why? What’s wrong with two dads, or two mums? Personally I don’t see how this is could be a bad thing. Stop living in your Medieval world Mr Parolin, and join us here in the 21st Century, the date is now the 28/05/15, and I’m sure it’s going to be a fine day for everyone fortunate enough to wake up into it.

I just like to say…

The LGBT community is just as important as anyone else, and they deserve to be treated as such. I hope that many, many countries follow in Ireland footsteps.

Equality is what “This” is, and it does need to be talked about, because it is important.

Okay, I understand why it might be scary for younger kids, because they don’t know what’s in the dark, and what they don’t know scares them. That’s how they grow up to become adults, because if they’re scared and/or cautious of something they don’t know or don’t understand, it’s less likely to be able to kill them. So kudos little ones!

But with older kids, teenagers and adults, that understand that so long as your wardrobe door is shut, nothing can come out and hurt you, why is the dark so bad?

It’s unknown…

The dark is an exciting place! There’s so much that is unknown, doesn’t that excite you? I will happily walk about in the middle of the night, it’s amazing. Aren’t you interested to see what could be out there in the dark? Like the nocturnal animals? Oh and an urban environment in the dark is a stunning sight. The night sky is beautiful too, away from the light pollution of cities. Who is going to argue with me about this being a beautiful picture?

Nobody. That’s who. And if someone would like to argue with me about it, I’d like to see them come up with a compelling argument as to why I’m wrong, I’m genuinely interested to hear it.

Don’t you just want to walk around at night and just have nobody around, no cars (Or depending where you live, fewer cars), nobody shouting or screaming, it can just be you and your thoughts? It’s honestly one of the best experiences ever, for me personally anyway. I would highly recommend it.

Okay, so there are dangers…

There are obviously dangers with the dark, it’s remarkably easy to break your leg while out walking in the dark, or to get lost. Getting lost is potentially one of the worst as even with the most strongest of minds, if you’re lost, in the dark, panic will quickly set in. That will also make breaking your leg somewhat easier, and more likely to happen. If that’s your goal then by all means! Go and get lost, but I didn’t tell you to do it.

If you’re going to go out in the dark, just make sure you have a light of some description, you don’t have to use it, but just have one with you (The torch on your phone I find is more than adequate), also a phone, that’s not dead, just in case it goes pear-shaped. If you’re just out sitting and enjoying the view of the night sky, then you’ll likely be perfectly safe, but if you’re walking that’s when I find problems can arise, via injury, for instance.

For me…

For me, someone who’s not too fond of people. Don’t get me wrong, some people I think are absolutely amazing, some of my friends are, in my opinion, better than anyone you know. One of my friends built a friendship with a moth, and if you don’t think that’s cool then you are lacking some imagination. You can read a little about the moth, he was called Phil, on her blog actually – wordsunplugged.wordpress.com. But generally? People aren’t for me, I find it hard to get on with them. I think I enjoy my own company far too much (Oh man, I’m going to be so alone, but that’s cool, I’m cool).

I went off on a little bit of a tangent there, my apologies, yes, for me the dark is the most excellent of places. There’s nobody about, and I can just sit and enjoy the nothingness that might be around me, it is a peaceful place for me. Sometimes I think back to when I was younger, and wonder why I didn’t enjoy the dark as much. Damn kid, you were missing out!

There is so much wonder I find in what you can observe in the dark. Foxes foraging for food, for instance, left overs that humans just threw out. To look up at the night sky and, more often than not, remind myself of this quote from Douglas Adams:

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

After having reminded myself of that genius, from Douglas Adams (R.I.P), I then try to imagine what’s out there! What if there really is a restaurant at the end of the universe? What if the nearest planet to harbour life is only in the next star system? Imagine it being so close? Just 4.37 light years away! I’m aware that a light year is 9.461×1012 km, but astronomically that is like from your house to the village shop, it’s hardly anything. I want an alien friend. I’d call him Small Stevey, regardless of his size relative to mine, he’ll be Small Stevey.

It’s not for everyone I suppose

I know it’s not for everyone, I’m not stupid enough to try and get you all to believe that the dark is the best thing since sliced bread. I do find it hard sometimes to understand why some people find it to be such a bad thing.

I still stand by what I said earlier, nobody can say that the night sky isn’t a beautiful sight. I’d love to be good enough with a camera to take such great shots, unfortunately I don’t actually have the time or the money right now to be pursuing that hobby. I’d never make a living out of it, that’s for sure. I have to get my A-levels done first before I can do anything else. One day maybe.

It is currently 01:20, and so I am going to head off to maybe go to bed, I don’t know that’s not really working out for me. Maybe I’ll watch a film. Interstellar seems appropriate after this.

Although there is no set in stone definition of a “Millennial”. For instance, while I was looking for it’s dictionary definition many sites and other sources stated that a millenial is someone who is reaching adulthood about the year 2000, whereas other state that millennials are born between 1982 and 1994, which contradicts my first example of alternate definitions because, I don’t know about you, but a 6 year old child is not an adult in my books. I decided in the end to settle on Dictionary.com’s definition as it fit nicely between the dates stated by some definitions and yet included other definitions (Such as that Millennials were born between 1982 and 1994).

Why are they different?

Millennials are also significantly different from other generations, not just because their birth years might be 30 years apart (Although that is quite a significant difference!). They have been found to be far less religious than previous generations. They are also incredibly well connected, they use social media and mobile phones far more often than older generations (Some may argue that this is just because they’ve grown up with it) and they have an incredible ability to incorporate new technology into their day-to-day lives, according to researchers at the Pew Research Centre in a report published in 2010 (Source: http://pewsocialtrends.org/files/2010/10/millennials-confident-connected-open-to-change.pdf). Millennials also tend to be very well educated, higher education and University educations. While I’m not about to say that previous generations were uneducated and were morons, because that’s a ridiculous thing to say, and who do you think taught the Millennials? Millennials owe the previous generation a thanks for this characteristic, and they also owe it to the fact education is so widely “advertised” for want of a better phrase. The need for and the importance of education is literally everywhere. Your teachers drum it into you at school, your parents do the same at home, your dream job likely requires one. Anyway, I digress!

Millennials generally have quite a positive outlook on the future ahead of them, despite that many in the Western World have economic catastrophes to clean up. The USA has a national debt pile of nearly $17 trillion! And the UK has a national debt of £1.56 trillion! Where’s the money gone!? That’s a question asked by many, and yet the solution is still that Millennial Generation will have to pay off the debt.

I must admit I am one of those Millennials with a positive outlook on the future, I think there’s so many interesting things to come! So many! It’s very exciting! NASA have plans of landing people, actual living people, on Mars sometime in the 2030s. Now don’t tell me that’s not interesting! I’m a bit of a physics and space nerd, so that’s the first example to come to mind, but that’s not to say there won’t be any more interesting things to come. Great works of literature, great films and plays, and maybe a new inspirational band to pack out every single arena they play in. That band to really send a message for change.

As with every generation…

Like many generations before, millennials have experienced events specific to their generation. September 11th, 2001, the Iraq war, and the War in Afghanistan. Despite these devastating events, there was no collective reaction to these events, now you can argue with me that the mourning, from around the world, and then the invasion of Iraq were reactions to 9/11. However what I mean is, for instance the Boomers generation actively protested the Vietnam War in the late 1960s, peaking in 1968.

We are Millennials.

So we are the Millennial Generation, Generation Y. We are here to stay, and I sincerely hope that our positive hopes for the future become a reality. I also hope that our closeness with technology doesn’t backfire and our own technology turns us into slaves.

I would like to think you’ll enjoy reading what goes on in the mind of a younger Millennial.